Maxoptix unveils optical drives, jukeboxes

Posted on July 01, 1998

Maxoptix unveils optical drives, jukeboxes

Maxoptix made its first foray into the DVD market recently when the company unveiled the DVD-Max, a 5.2GB DVD-RAM drive. DVD-Max offers a data transfer rate of up to 2.76MBps and is compatible with DVD-RAM/ROM/R, CD-ROM (Mode 1 and 2), CD-ROM XA, CD-I/R/RW, and CD-DA.

Maxoptix also offers DVD-RAM media in the 2.6GB single-sided cartridge or in the 5.2GB double-sided cartridge. The company claims the media can be overwritten 100,000 times and has a data storage life of more than 30 years. DVD-Max is available in four configurations for both external and internal installation. The product contains a SCSI-2 interface and a 1MB buffer. The DVD-Max is under $1,000 for the internal version, and under $1,100 for the external version.

Maxoptix also recently announced the CD-Max, a CD-RW drive designed to provide high performance as well as backward compatibility with CD-R media and all CD-ROM formats. CD-Max is compliant with the Universal Data Format (UDF), which provides a path to eventual DVD drive implementation. The product is also bundled with CD authoring tools from vendors including Adaptec and Ahead Software. CD-Max is able to write data at a transfer rate of 300KBps and read at 900KBps. The drive also has a SCSI-2 interface designed for easier integration with virtually any operating system. The product will be available for shipment in mid-December at list prices ranging from $659 to $769.

On the magneto-optical (MO) front, Maxoptix announced it has started shipping the T6-5200, which company officials claim is the industry`s first 8X MO drive. Sporting twice the capacity of 2.6GB drives, the T6-5200 contains a 4MB cache, has a 20ms average seek time, and an Ultra SCSI interface. The drive is read and write compatible with previous ISO MO media. Internal and external installations are list priced at $1,769 and $1,899, respectively.

A next-generation family of MO jukeboxes, featuring the new T6-5200 drive, has also been introduced by Maxoptix. The MX620, MX640, MX6126, MX6202, and MX6278 have 20 to 278 slots. The jukeboxes contain dual-disk transport and transfer rates of up to 20MBps. Capacities range from 104GB to more than 1.45TB. To protect the existing storage investment of customers, company officials maintain the jukeboxes are also fully read/write compatible with the three earlier generations of ISO-Standard CCW and rewritable media, including 650MB, 1.3GB and 2.6GB MO, CCW, and LIMDOW. Pricing ranges from the MX620 with two drives at under $7,000 to the two-drive MX6278 at under $50,000. www.maxoptix.com.

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